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| Soldiers crossing the Piave River in the Grave of Papadopoli. Juni 1918 |
The CEDOS was established in
July 1992 in conjunction with the donation made by Eugenio Bucciol of an
important collection of WWI pictures with the intent to preserve and valorize
this visual material. Bucciol, who was a member CEDOS till last year, lived for
a long period in Vienna, where he collected in the city war archive a series of
about 1.500 photos took by the Austrian Army when it occupied Friuli and part
of Veneto after the rout of Caporetto in the timespan 1917-1918.
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| Refugee children in Ponte di Piave. November 1917 |
This first collection supplied the sources for five photo-books edited
by Bucciol and the CEDOS itself: Inediti della Grande Guerra – Immagini
dell’invasione Austro-Germanica in Friuli e Veneto Orientale (Trieste,
1990), Il Veneto nell’obiettivo austro-ungarico – L’occupazione del 1917-1918
nelle foto dell’Archivio di Guerra di Vienna (Treviso, 1992); 1915-1918
– Foto italiane e austro-ungariche fronte a fronte (Portogruaro 1995); Dalla
Moldava al Piave – I legionari cecoslovacchi sul fronte italiano della Grande
Guerra (Portogruaro 1998); Albania – Fronte dimenticato della Grande
Guerra (Portogruaro 2001).
A second wide collection arrived in the CEDOS archives in 1994, when the
Fototeca della Regione Veneto donated 3.500 photos in diapositive, which were
originally hold in the Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italiano – Museo
Centrale del Risorgimento in Rome.
In the following years
smaller collections were donated to the Centre in San Polo, which gathers today
more than 1.000 photos shot during or short after the Great War, most of them
coming from Italian archives (70%), but also from Austrian, French and English
collections.
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| 7th British Division in Cimadolmo, near the river Piave. November 1918. |
Indeed, almost all these
documents are nowadays available (in low resolution) also in the main public
digital archives, for instance in Europeana1418, and yet the CEDOS offers a
valuable resource for all researchers interested in the ww1 photography and
history.The Centre in San Polo arranges in fact its materials coming from
different part of the world into a specific thematic and chronological frame and
offers historical and technical advices, so that comparative approaches and
also studies focused on the south-western front can take particular advantage
of this archive.
Besides this wide
photo-archive, the CEDOS tries to support the historical research on the –
someway still neglected – south-eastern front by publishing a biannual series –
named Quaderni del CEDOS –, by promoting cooperation with
other museums or associations and, finally, by organizing cultural events and
international conferences, like the forthcoming meeting in San Donà di Piave on
23rd April which will discuss the Great War in the lower Piave region, considering both
the Austro-Hungarian and the Italian Army, as well as the local population.
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| Destroyed houses and church in Ormelle, Piave region. June 1918 |
You can find further information on the website
(unfortunately at the moment only in Italian – but don’t hesitate to write in
English or in other languages: the staff will answer you as soon as possible)
or you can receive some previews of the historical photos and of pics taken
today along the former frontline by following the Twitter account, or
keep yourself updated checking the FaceBook profile.
